semanticsMassively Edited down:
Once one claims to be an atheist, can one claim to be a tabula rasa?
If so, why? If “No”, are all claims about the existence of [God] a positive epistemological claim?
No
Specifically, we are all born not believing in a god. That is the tabula rasa state. That is the standard atheist position as well. To the extent that you want to distinguish between non-belief and dis-belief, the latter is strong atheism. I really fail to see the distinction between the two though.
What would the distinction be? Is there really a difference between not believing in something because one has never heard of it and not believing in something because one has heard of it but not seen any compelling evidence? Stating that there is a difference seems to assume that belief in claims is the default state and that we should all believe every statement that we run across that isn’t already in conflict with another statement that we ran across first.
Did I go from non-belief to dis-belief in the flying spaghetti monster when I first heard the phrase?
###No.
Does anyone consider them to be without knowledge regarding Santa, the tooth fairy, or the invisible pink unicorn? No, we stake the claim that they do not exist, even though we cannot know this for certain in the philosophical sense (eg, anything not proven not to exist may). That is, the default position, in the absence of evidence that something exists, is that does not.
As such, the position most atheists take is that there is (in their eyes) no good evidence and/or argument for the existence of god, and therefore the logical claim to make is that he does not exist.
Your questions are based on a false equivalence. The claim “I am an Atheist” is in a completely different category from epistemic claims about the existence of God. (Specifically, using epistemic to mean KNOWLEDGE claims, not statements of “belief.”)
Answering the Title Question, as re-edited:
If I claim to be an Atheist, is that not a claim to knowledge
The answer depends on what you are claiming is the definition of atheist. The term by itself makes no claim of knowledge. Without knowing what you are claiming (since there are varying definitions of atheism, some with knowledge claims and some without) your question is unanswerable as stated.
By my definition of atheism, which corresponds with a vast majority of others: Atheism is a claim about “belief” not knowledge. It is a claim about whether or not one thinks the addition of the “God Hypothesis” is a useful/necessary addition to one’s worldview.
So my answer to the title question is NO, based on the majority “atheist approved” definition of atheism.
If you believe that atheism involves a claim to knowledge, it only means that you have heard or been subject to the dominant non-atheist definition, which essentially boils down to the canard, “Atheists are people who KNOW there is no God.” I argue that when the religious assert that atheists stake a claim to knowledge, they do so as a projected mirror image of THEIR untenable position: Believers claim to KNOW there IS a God.
Answering the sub-question:
If “No”, are all claims about the existence of [God] a positive epistemological claim?
As mentioned at the top, your second question does not follow from the first, as it is a completely different category of claim/statement.
Again, by distinguishing knowledge claims from belief claims, the answer is NO. There can be Gnostic Theists who assert, “I know that my God exists.” There can be Agnostic Theists who assert, “I believe God exists, but knowledge of the truth of that statement isn’t possible.”
In other words, the claim to knowledge is not held within the term. It depends on what the asserter intends. The phrase “I am an atheist” contains no inherent claim to knowledge, any more than “I am a Theist.”
I’d say yes, but only if we are talking about calling oneself an atheist.
Someone who never came into contact with theism and is not believing in any god is by definition an atheist as well, but he’ll never feel the need, let alone come to the idea to describe himself as such. I think it’s only when one comes into contact with religion that one can define oneself as an atheist as a way of rejecting the religious claims.
No.
http://joreth.livejournal.com/187215.html
Atheism is without belief. Agnosticism is without knowledge.
That’s it. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that. The very word itself does, indeed, mean “tabula rasa”
The short answer to this question, in my opinion, is ‘no.’
There are those, however, who would argue that unless you have done research into literally every mythology associated with every religion, past or present, then you may not be positioned to say with absolute certainty that there is no god. At this point, it becomes a discussion of semantics. When you say that “god doesn’t exist,” what exactly is it you’re saying doesn’t exist? As an easy example, I can say with certainty that the Judeo-Christian god does not exist. How do I know this? I’ve read the Bible.
As long, though, as the definition of “god” has some supernatural aspects, then it falls back to the simple statement that, just because something doesn’t currently have a natural explanation, that doesn’t mean that the explanation is supernatural. The scientific community is constantly making discoveries, and are coming up with more and more natural explanations for what previously wasn’t understood. This, of course, leaves less and less room for the supernatural.
Will we eventually be able to explain everything about the cosmos? Probably not. And I’m fine with that. Every time we discover something, new, it raises more questions that need answering. It’s as exhilarating – if not moreso – as anything that religion might be able to offer.
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in the claim that there is a god. You appear to be talking about gnosticism, that is the claim of knowledge about the existence of gods. I am an agnostic atheist, I have no absolute knowledge about the existence of gods and I lack the belief in one as a result.
Not sure how many gnostic atheists there are though! :)
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